100
Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen
Brook renders savagery with the despairing eye of a humanist, and with the irresolvable ambivalence of an artist.
Lord of the Flies
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- United Kingdom
- 1963
- · 92m
Director
Peter Brook
Cast
James Aubrey,
Tom Chapin,
Hugh Edwards,
Roger Elwin,
Tom Gaman,
Nicholas Hammond
Genre
Adventure,
Drama,
Thriller
Amidst a nuclear war, a plane carrying a group of schoolboys crash lands on a deserted island. With no adult survivors, the boys are forced to fend for themselves. At first they cooperate, but when they split into two separate camps their society falls into disarray, leading to a disturbing examination of human nature.
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What are critics saying?
90
The Dissolve by Scott Tobias
As it stands, Brook’s adaptation is an encroaching nightmare of innocence lost, following Golding’s thesis about what happens when civilization breaks down and man’s true nature is revealed.
80
The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps
Like Golding's novel, Flies wears its allegorical impulses on its sleeve, but, also like Golding's novel, it rings uncomfortably true.
80
CineVue by Christopher Machell
William Golding’s tale of public schoolboys stranded on a desert island is an iconic depiction of fundamental savagery. More than fifty years on, Peter Brook’s 1963 Lord of the Flies remains the definitive film, its hallucinogenic brutality as terrifying as ever.
70
Time Out
Brook knows he can't have his 10- to 12-year-olds mouthing philosophical and poetic paragraphs, so he shoots it like a documentary, overcoming the starvation budget, the location problems, and the sometimes awkward performances. However, the principals are excellent.
70
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
Brook knows he can't have his 10- to 12-year-olds mouthing philosophical and poetic paragraphs, so he shoots it like a documentary, overcoming the starvation budget, the location problems, and the sometimes awkward performances. However, the principals are excellent.
50
TV Guide Magazine
There are some vicious highlights, but the acting is wildly variable, and the film manages to be both overwrought and dull.
50
Variety
The theme of young boys reverting to savagery when marooned on a deserted island has its moments of truth, but this pic rates as a near-miss on many counts.
50
The New York Times by Bosley Crowther
A curiously flat and fragmentary visualization of the original.
50
Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
William Golding's 1954 allegory on man's innate inhumanity is too facile by half, which makes it ideal for high school English classes but rather too gaseous and predictable for the movies.
50
Variety by Staff (Not Credited)
The theme of young boys reverting to savagery when marooned on a deserted island has its moments of truth, but this pic rates as a near-miss on many counts.
50
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
There are some vicious highlights, but the acting is wildly variable, and the film manages to be both overwrought and dull.
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